feature story
Why a County in
UTAH Could Play a Role in
ISRAEL’S JUDICIAL CRISIS
Ben Sales | JTA.org
A ron Davidson has never been to Israel. He isn’t Jewish. He
began serving in his position, Utah County clerk, just two
months ago.

But the policies he oversees in his offi ce in Provo, Utah, could
have an impact more than 7,000 miles away — in the halls of
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem.

That’s because Davidson is the top local offi cial in a county
that has, improbably, caused a seismic shift in the way marriages
are legally recognized in the Jewish state. An ensuing court
battle over the issue — which the Israeli government just lost
— could provide added motivation for Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu to pass controversial judicial reform that has already
thrown the country into crisis.

Let’s take a step back and break this down.

LUGOSTOCK / AdobeStock
How does marriage work in Israel?
Although a large chunk of Israeli Jews are secular, legal marriage
in the country is controlled by the Chief Rabbinate, which is haredi
Orthodox. In other words, within Israel, the only way for a Jew to
get legally married is through an Orthodox ceremony.

That means same-sex marriage, interfaith marriage
and non-Orthodox weddings performed in Israel
are not recognized by the Israeli government. Also left in limbo
are hundreds of thousands of largely Russian-speaking Israelis,
who are not Jewish according to traditional Jewish law and are
therefore unable to get married in Israel.

But there’s a loophole of sorts: Marriages performed and
recognized abroad also get recognized in Israel. So for decades,
non-Orthodox Israelis have found a workaround to those
restrictions by taking a short fl ight to Cyprus to tie the knot, or
traveling farther afi eld for their weddings. They then bring their
marriage certifi cate to Israel complete with a stamp of authenti-
cation (called an apostille), and voila: legally married.

What does that have to do with Utah?
Starting in 2020, Utah County, Utah, began recognizing marriages
performed entirely via videoconference, as long as the offi ciant
or one of the parties was in the county. The county encompasses
the area surrounding Provo, which is home to Brigham Young
University and has a tech scene. Offi cials saw the new remote
marriage system as a way to make it easier to “execute a permis-
sion slip from the government for two consenting adults
to get married,” as former County
Clerk Amelia Powers Gardner
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